Some persons, successors of the materialistic ecclesiastics who condemned Galileo, cannot rise beyond the gross evidence of their senses. To such persons reason, which transcends sense, is a vague unreality, and the clear teaching of reason may to them seem doubtful, or superstition. But the stout fight which the old Italian nobly began, and which has been so bravely carried on for freedom of thought in our own day, is beginning to tell and reap a rich reward. Our senses, so far from being the boundary of real existence, are proved to be as untrustworthy guides now, as when Galileo’s accusers insisted that the sun moved round the earth in twenty-four hours. The relations of our senses to our consciousness change with biological differences, as one creature can see what is quite invisible to another. The boundary-line which exists between our senses and our consciousness is constantly changing, and realities are shown to exist, of which our ordinary consciousness connected with the senses has no knowledge. Thus, life beyond, and independent of the senses, is being proved as positive and pregnant fact. The great generalizations of modern science--the Conservation of Energy, the process of Evolution--are the products of Reason. They are metaphysical conceptions. Like the atomic theory or the law of gravitation, they are practical formulæ necessary to the advancement of science from the structure of our minds but they are the results of reason, not of sense. Love, Hope, Reverence, are realities of a different order from the senses, but they are positive and constant facts, always active, always working out mighty changes in human life. A thoughtful writer has characterized Materialism as an attempt to explain the Universe in terms of mass and motion rather than in terms of Intelligence, Love, and Will, and it is a true criticism. Let me recall here the serious warning which Huxley gives to the shallow materialist who limits existence by the senses. He says: ‘The great danger which besets the speculative faculty is the temptation to deal with the accepted statement of facts in natural science as if they were not only correct but exhaustive--as if they might be dealt with exhaustively, in the same way as propositions of Euclid may be dealt with. In reality, every such statement, however true it may be, is true only relatively to the means of observation and the point of view of those who have enunciated it. Whether it will bear every speculative conclusion that may be logically deduced from it is quite another question.’ ‘In the complexity of organic nature there are multitudes of phenomena which are not deducible from any generalizations that we have yet reached; this is true of every other class of natural objects (as the moon’s motions, gravitation, etc.). All that should be attempted is a working hypothesis, assuming only such causes as can be proved to be actually at work.’ These are valuable warnings from our great naturalist.